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The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) would like to thank the authors
of the draft RFC2717bis/RFC2718bis [1]. Your draft represents a
significant contribution to the Web community. It is very well written,
covers a broad range of important and sometimes subtle points, and in
general we are very pleased to support its progress through the IETF
process. We particularly appreciate the reference to our Architecture of
the Worldwide Web (AWWW) document [2].
We do have one suggestion to which we hope you will give serious
consideration. Section 2.1 states:
"Because URI schemes constitute a single, global namespace, the unbounded
registration of new schemes is harmful to the Internet community. For
this reason, new URI schemes SHOULD have clear utility to the broad
Internet community, beyond that available with already registered URI
schemes."
This is small step beyond what's already in RFC 2718, but we suggest that
it would be useful to go further. Specifically, we believe that it would
be valuable to more clearly emphasize that barriers to new scheme creation
must be high. Stated positively, we suggest that there be clearer
encouragement to use existing schemes, and especially to use schemes that
are widely deployed. Our hope is that such guidance might in future
prevent the registration of schemes such as dav: [3], an example of a
scheme that we consider poorly motivated. We note too that various
commercial organizations continue to deploy schemes that are at best
marginally different in function from existing schemes such as http.
Perhaps a clearer explanation of the issues would be useful guidance for
those proposing similar schemes in the future. Note that the AWWW
document does include some detailed discussion of the advantages of scheme
reuse [4], and we invite you to reference that discussion normatively or
otherwise should you find that helpful.
Thank you again for your hard work on the draft, and for your
consideration of these concerns.
Henry S. Thompson
for the W3C Technical Architecture Group
[note -- followups to uri@w3.org, please]
References:
[1] http://ietfreport.isoc.org/all-ids/draft-hansen-2717bis-2718bis-uri-guidelines-05.txt
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/
[3] http://asg.web.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc2518.html#sec-8.1.1
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#URI-scheme
- --
Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
Half-time member of W3C Team
2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
[mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]
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